Early on the afternoon of February 7th, 2007, Australian skier and photojournalist Shaun Kratzer was killed in a self-triggered avalanche while skiing in the back country on Mount Apharwat near Gulmarg, Kashmir. As described in the Kashmir ski blog Line of Control, by the Eric Segalstad, the mountain conditions that led to the avalanche may have been a natural occurrence, but it was the choices made by the skier that ultimately led to his death.
When I asked my ski guide, Wally Muhammad, about the previous month's skiing fatality - what had happened and how - his response was little more than acknowledgment. "Over there," he said, pointing to a ravine three ridges away. "Once avalanche starts, not much you can do."
Death is not a new thing for this place; it has seen more than its share.
Several international newspapers report that between 1989 and 2003 an estimated 30,000 to 40,000 people were killed as a result of the Kashmiri conflict between India and Pakistan. And while that number seems staggering, it pales in comparison to the effects of the October 2005 earthquake, which is said to have killed over 70,000 people, mostly in Pakistan-controlled territory.
On Sunday afternoon after a few turns through the yogurt-white snow, I waited with Wally at a clearing while my friend skied down to us. Pondering the tragedy that fate had wrought upon this beautiful landscape after hearing stories of the avalanche, the wars and the earthquake, my mind was jarred back to the present by two muffled booms that sounded like rounds of artillery fire, echoing from a distant mountain top.
"What the hell is that?" I said to Wally, exasperated.
"Army practice. Usually on Mondays. Not sure why today..."
Mount Apharwat sits about 13 kilometers, roughly 6 miles, from the infamous Line of Control between the Pakistani and Indian armies. While neither side recognizes the boundary, it has become the de-facto border between the two countries at their northern end. On the map below, the tiny hill station of Gulmarg is delineated with a blue arrow.
The drive from the airport in Srinagar to Gulmarg takes just under two hours, but the ride feels much longer as every 500 yards you pass machine gun-totting soldiers and armored vehicles, all there to make the Indian army's presence felt (and to discourage insurgent activity). Kashmir feels like a country under foreign occupation. But although political protests are still frequent, most locals agree that the tourism business, and by extension the economy, have begun to improve since the cease fire agreement in 2003.
Over lunch Wally told me his various approaches to finding work during his 15 year skiing hiatus when threats of violence had killed the Kashmir ski industry. After starting as a ski instructor, he left Kashmir in 1990 to become a trekking guide in the nearby state of Himachal Pradesh. He had ventured as far south as Delhi to work in the central government's tourism department, but, tired of splitting time between family and work, he eventually moved back to Kashmir, and in 2003, began guiding skiers in Gulmarg again.
The prime earning years of his career having been constrained by a conflict he seemed disgusted with but accustomed to, Wally was relatively well off compared to the hundreds of men we saw wondering around the streets outside Gulmarg, milling about, carrying bricks, seemingly looking for work. Grown men pulled teenage tourists and their luggage on toboggan sleds for a few rupees at a time. Two men offered to do the same for us, despite the fact we were already sitting in an automobile. Another man jumped on to the back of our jeep's bumper and rode our vehicle into town.
Overseeing all of this activity in the market were a few dozen Indian troops, part of a 100,000+ force still in place in Kashmir. Every year the Indian government spends millions of dollars housing, feeding and compensating these unskilled laboring Indian soldiers, whose primary task is to make sure other unskilled, out-of-work, military-age laborers of Kashmiri origin remain pacified in their poverty.
Coming down with a case of cabin fever in our freezing and deserted hotel, which had started to look like the lodge from Stephan King's "The Shining," my friends and I hopped into a jeep with two Indian skiers and a Dutch guy and told our backstories on "why we were here." We headed to the only other place we knew that was serving food. After catching a chill while stopping to push the jeep out of a ditch, we warmed up with a bottle of black-market, Indian Army whiskey. I asked our road companions how much they paid for the stuff, a difficult item to get in this Muslim state where alcohol is all but banned. "500 rupees off a soldier we met" was the answer. The bottle was stamped 'For Indian Defense and Paramilitary Personel Only.' That certainly wasn't us but I took my swigs nonetheless.
The Muhgul King Nuruddin Jahangir's priceless quote about Kashmir popped into my head while the booze numbed my senses as I'm sure liquor had done countless times before for the Indian soldiers sent to this frost-bitten outpost from their homes far away on the hot Deccan Plateau.
"If heaven be on earth then it is here, it is here, it is here in Kashmir."
It must have sounded like an Orwellian slogan from 1984 to these Indian troops, paid to stand around and look menacing so as to discourage a few thousand other men also standing around not to join an insurgency.
This is yet another casualty of Kashmir - the missed economic opportunity. There are amazing resources in this state, from unique cultural exports like Khawva tea and Cashmere wool, to a new gondola system at the highest ski resort in the world with more terrain than Johnny Moseley could ski in a season. But everyday in Kashmir the political realities make risk-taking more than just an economic activity. Up here in "heaven," it is instead a way of life.
